From daily commute to long drives, bike rental market is scaling up

Attributed to: Pranay Shrivastava, Co-Founder & CEO, WheelStreet

Bike rental market is growing at an unbelievable pace in India. It is bringing an excellent pool of opportunities for bike enthusiasts and daily commuters to travel conveniently and with affordability. Whether going for an outstation trip or commuting for office, the adventure enthusiasts and daily commuters always find bike riding a convenient option.

Interesting startups and their unique offerings are building up a successful bike rental market in India. They are streamlining the renting process and working on strengthening their catalogue to provide a hassle-free renting experience to travellers. From preference to the needs of commuters, Indian bike rental market offers abundant opportunities to choose from a wide variety of bikes to rent for desired time frames.

The concept of bike rental is not new in India. Tourist destinations like Leh & Ladakh, Kerala and Goa are full of bike renting vendors offering affordable bikes to tourists for leisure. As per the estimates of Motorcycle Rental market report, its market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7% between 2017 and 2021.

Increase in road-trip tourism tops the list of major drivers for the increase in bike rental market size followed by traffic jams and congested locations in metro cities. In addition, the rise in the fare by cab aggregators and taxi availability is also becoming one of the biggest drivers of the industry as individuals prefer to opt for an affordable transpiration for their intracity commute.

Apart from road-trip tourism, the problem of intracity routes with heavy traffic jams is increasing the travel time of daily commuters. Hence, the bike renting industry is now addressing this problem by scaling up its personalized mix of services that are being offered by bike renting startups.

Undoubtedly, the concept of bike renting is booming in the country. With the quest to make bike renting quicker and hassle-free process, several startups and vendors are working on their unique business models. They have introduced easy rentals on hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis to overcome the availability and affordability challenge.

Additionally, renting companies are also addressing the common challenge of finding a reliable bike renting vendor. In the majority of cases, references don’t work the way they should be. It is difficult for the passenger to compare prices, bike models and sometimes they also go through the situation of cheating as well.

However, bike aggregators are constantly looking for effective solutions in order to combat this challenge. They are also creating a marketplace featuring reliable bike renting vendors with different bike models, availability and pricing for the convenience of renters.

Over the years, bike renting market has evolved drastically. It is growing in a two-way process and yet to explore the huge potential. Increase in internet penetration, smartphone and use of applications has enabled easy booking options for riders and renters.

Apart from offering high convenience to renters, it is also providing the vendors with growth opportunities by taking bookings through bike renting apps developed by startup entrepreneurs. Such apps complement the existing business models of bike vendors by giving them a platform where they can manage their fleet and track bookings.

There is another problem with last mile connectivity in metro cities and semi-urban cities where hardly any public transportation is seen. Moreover, the local transport authorizes are also supporting the idea of bike renting startups as they are actually solving the bigger problem of last mile connectivity gaps. Many states authorize have started legalizing bike renting services and others are also announcing to consider this move.

The growing concept of bike renting is also playing a crucial role in protecting the environment. The problems such as population, bad air quality and congested roads have reached unsustainable levels. Hence, bike renting is becoming the need of the hour that can help the commuters without contributing extra to the city’s growing pollution and traffic congestions.

Bike renting aggregators are playing an indispensable role in solving the connectivity problem at a faster pace than public transportation. It is witnessing a rise in bike sharing as well as renting and planning to attract more new users to their solutions.